“It’s very much an evolution for us,” she said. “Right now, Neil will bring in a musical idea. Maybe that’s on a mandolin, maybe that’s on an acoustic guitar, maybe that’s a drum beat and a synthesizer.”

“Usually (after) that initial musical idea, we’ll start kicking around some melodies. We always sort of sit in a writers’ circle,” she said, adding that for The Band Perry, “Music’s first, melody comes second, and lyrics come third for us.”

Ultimately, those three elements come together, and they seem to consistently come together in the form of a hit, whether it’s a ballad like their breakout hit “If I Die Young”
or more heavy badass rocker like “Chainsaw,”
their current single.

“We all just sort of just pile those on top of each other, and eventually a song is born,” Perry said.

But when they’re piling the lyrics on, she draws the line on those certain words because, well, she can.

So The Band Perry may not ever sing about hurricanes, butterflies and rainbows. But they will dig you a grave, bury you in satin, saw down the tree where you fell in love, and their daddy’s gonna straighten you out like a piece of wire.